Ta da
No one could figure out how it had happened. A station full of the most talented technicians money could buy, and yet no one could figure out how or why the refrigerator had blown up. They even called the maintenance department head down to take a look at it, but he was just as dumbfounded as the others. As he entered the Lounge, he nearly gagged as the scent of phosphor and burnt cabbage assailed his nostrils. Mustering up his courage and pressing a handkerchief to his nose, he strode meekly into the room. Yet for all of his gusto and expertise, he could not figure out why such a machine would decide to spontaneously combust. One of the mechanics had offered that it might have been some sort of super circuit breaker overload, but there was no evidence of any such a thing occuring. Sabotage had been ruled out, as no explosive had been found – they had self-vaporizing explosives, sure, but those were military-issue only. The likelihood of someone stealing one of those was very remote.
Whatever the cause was, the problem still remained. The lounge was unusable in it's current state, and take-out food was beginning to get old. The maintenance office put in for a new refrigerator as soon as it could, and sent a repair team to fix the lounge as quickly as possible.
That replacement request was then rerouted through several stacks of paperwork, lost for about three days, found, lost, found again, sent, stamped, approved, and finally managed to get it's coffee stained pages to the transmission desk, where it was typed out and sent away to LL Luxury Liner's replacement desk some .5 light seconds away on Earth. There, it was stamped, re stamped, approved, disapproved, re approved, and finally sent through to the ordering desk back on Luna, where the new refrigerator was finally ordered after almost two weeks of bureaucratic snafus. The lounge regulars were overjoyed to finally hear that their order had been processed – the more radical elements of the crew had gotten so desperate as to store their drinks near the cryogenic coolant for the station's nuclear reactor. This practice did actually keep the drinks cool, although the health concerns of such a practice were a little more than scary.
There was one other soul who was also quite happy to hear of the refrigerator's replacement. McSweety had been sitting in deep orbit around the Moon ever since his daring raid on the station and his subsequent detonation of several packs of soda and pop rocks underneath the of the now-deceased appliance. It was around noon by his watch when a shrill klaxon banged through the ship, shaking him awake from his slumber inside the bridge. Grogilly he rolled over in midair and glanced over his shoulder at the offending console – then promptly chucked his now-empty beer bottle at it, which bounced off with a loud clang and continued on it's course to places unknown.
It was around midnight by McSweety's watch when he actually received the message. After finally awakening from his nap, he turned over to find that the previously beaten console had not learned it's lesson previously, and was still displaying information in defiance of his best efforts otherwise. Perplexed at this obvious and flagrant disregard for his command authority, he decided to investigate, and was surprised to see that there was a file on his screen, begging for his attentions. Drearily he opened it, half hoping to find it to be a love note from some beautiful woman somewhere out in the universe, who had heard of his daring exploits and wanted to see if such a manly man really existed.
Unfortunately, he found it instead to be some stupid refrigerator order. Someone must have sent it to the wrong address – he was about to delete it when he noticed the name at the top of the page – LL Luxury Liners. Immediately he recoiled from the delete button as if he had been bitten by a snake. Shaking his head at what could have been a monstrous mistake, he took a closer look at the document in front of him. From the looks of it, the engineers down at the shipyards were taking the opportunity to order the biggest refrigerator they could, and had used the company's already bloated budget to add in all of the bells and whistles. Chrome-plated exterior, ice maker with laser cube cutters, enough space to fit three men inside, a partially walk-in freezer – the list went on. This was a serious piece of culinary machinery that McSweety had on his hands, and he wasn't going to let such a prized bit of equipment go to waste. Immediately he found the factory that was shipping the refrigerator, where it would stop off before it reached the shipyard, and started on his way. Programming the autopilot for the Luna Cargo Yards, he set off to steal himself one very large, very expensive refrigeration unit.
Two days later, when the refrigerator finally arrived at the orbital cargo yard, McSweety was ready. Dressed in the fake uniform he had copied off the one he stole earlier, a bushy parka, dark sunglasses, giant rubber boots, and carrying a fat backpack stuffed with equipment, he looked just a little bit crazy. Slowly he maneuvered the Hangdog towards the floating container park – rows upon rows of neatly aligned block cargo pods. A short distance away laid the massive hub station,and above the cargo field several small cargo drones slipped back and forth between the containers, monitoring them carefully. McSweety set his course for the outermost edge of the field, stealthily approaching the container he knew to hold the new fridge. His radar picked up a moving blip and he shut off his engines, drifting lazily to rest behind A security drone buzzed past, blissfully unaware of the pirate vessel hiding just behind several large crates. McSweety waited several minutes before firing his engines up again and approaching the container, his massive ship slowly emerging from the shadows of the other crates as if stalking it's prey. Sidling up gently to the crate, McSweety quickly docked his ship. Setting the autopilot for an automatic heading, he bolted quickly to the airlock hatch – he only had a minute before the autopilot automatically undocked from the container. Undoing the latch as quickly as he could, he tossed his backpack inside the crate and hauled himself in rapidly afterwards. Quickly turning around inside the damp, dark vessel, he quickly rebolted the latches connecting the two hunks of metal – and not a moment too soon. No sooner had he closed the hatch for good than did he hear a loud whooshing sound as the Hangdog departed. Standing up and brushing himself off, hescrounged the floor for his back pack – the interior of the container was absolutely pitch black. Finding it with nothing but his sense of touch, he unzipped it and scrounged around inside. His hand grasped a long cylindrical object and he pulled it out. Feeling around the cold outer surface, he found the switch. Turning it on, he waited for the light to come – only to be greeted with a loud humming noise and a bright red LED counting down from five. Dropping the grenade in his surprise, he frantically scrambled around on the floor, snapping it up and turning it off just as it was about to hit zero. For a few seconds he sat, composing himself – he then put the grenade back in the bag, and this time made sure to pull out the flashlight. Flicking it on and waving it about the room, he was happily greeted with the sight of refrigerator, looming not five feet in front of him, draped in cargo netting.
